A look into Rompa’s plastic ball

7 april 2017

Patrick Gerard
CEO

2016 was the year of growth in Europe, investments in China and a new joint venture in Shanghai. Our business continued to grow rapidly! What does 2017 have in store for the company? Although we don’t have a crystal ball, we do have concrete plans. Time for a look to the past and the future with our CEO Patrick Gerard.

Over the past year, Rompa Group has grown significantly in Europe. “The economy is doing well here,” says Patrick Gerard. “That is reflected in the increasing demand for high-quality injection products from both existing and new customers. We benefited a lot from this demand, particularly in Eastern Europe. Look at the automotive industry, which is growing rapidly. When it comes to production and assembly, companies are still moving towards Eastern Europe. That region is still booming.”

The downside of growth

Rompa Group also experienced the downside of the economic growth in Eastern Europe last year. “The unemployment rate in many industrial regions in Eastern Europe, and therefore also in the Czech Republic, has gone down significantly,” Patrick Gerard explains. “That makes it difficult to find the right operators to collaborate and realise our growth with. Particularly during the summer, this led to some issues and even production backlogs. In September of 2016, we therefore opened a new site in Slovakia that is fully dedicated to assembly. This was done to relieve some of the strain put on the factory in the Czech Republic.”

Approaching one hundred machines

“Now that the assembly activities in Europe will be entirely concentrated in Slovakia, we can go back to focusing on injection moulding and thermoforming in the Czech Republic,” Patrick Gerard continues. “Our goal? One hundred injection-moulding machines in the Czech Republic. In 2016, we invested significantly in our machinery. We currently have over seventy injection-moulding machines in Europe alone.”

“Our goal? One hundred injection-moulding machines in the Czech Republic.”

Cleanroom in China

Whereas European revenue figures grew over the past year, they remained the same in Asia. Here, the focus was placed on investing in the future. Patrick Gerard: “We made important developments in two areas. For example, we built an advanced cleanroom in Jiangmen (Guangdong) and earned a medical ISO certification. That will allow us to also play a meaningful role in the medical industry.” The second development has to do with a focus on the manufacture of “finished products”. “This concerns products for which we handle both the electrical and the mechanical engineering. This is an interesting market, as a growing number of businesses opt to have complete products made in China. The investments into our engineering department have already resulted in a number of great projects.”

Worldwide opportunities

Are there any more plans for the coming year? “Certainly,” says Patrick Gerard. “Our strategy is to achieve a global autonomous growth rate of 10 to 20% every year. In Europe, we expect to mainly realise this growth in the automotive and technical products sectors. To do so, we have expanded our international sales and engineering team with a couple of new members, who all started in January of 2017. I also have high expectations of our joint venture with Hi-P. The collaboration between our two companies has been very fruitful and our new joint production site in Shanghai will be officially opened this month. Last but not least: the prospects are great when it comes to our OEM and ODM activities – in other words, our finished products – including the engineering of mechanical and electronic products. This will allow us to grow significantly in China!”

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